VETO BARGAINING AND THE FIRST CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

To observers in 1992, the election of Bill Clinton seemed to mark an end to the era of divided government. After twelve long years a Democrat was back in the White House. The House of Representatives remained the rock-solid bastion of the Democratic Party, as it had since 1955 and apparently always would. The Democrats held the chamber by a 258 to 176 advantage, with one Independent. The Democrats also held the sometimes volatile Senate with the solid margin of 57–43, unchanged from the 102nd Congress.

The ideological distribution of senators in the 103rd Congress is shown in the top panel of Figure 9.1. Strikingly clear is the polarization of the Senate. On the left was a large block of very liberal Democrats, on the right a substantial group of conservative Republicans, and on the far right an isolated group of extreme conservatives. The middle was thinly populated. Given this configuration, the Democratic leadership in the Senate favored a “start left” rather than a “start center” strategy. In other words, whenever possible, legislative initiatives were shaped to appeal to liberal Democrats and then include concessions to pick up a few moderates, rather than appeal to larger bipartisan supermajority. Given the nearly empty center, the policy costs of gaining the extra Republican votes were often prohibitively steep, at least for a very liberal Democratic caucus.

The 103rd Congress moved briskly to pass an impressive array of legislation, ultimately totaling nine important and ten landmark enactments, a very respectable record (Cameron et al. 1996; Mayhew 1995).